Travelling to Infinity

by Jane Hawking

  During sparse weekday minutes and half hours, the writing began to flow with an unaccustomed ease. At weekends, on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, the songs began to flow as well. I voraciously attacked whatever Nigel, my personal Svengali, put before me, whether Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Mozart, Britten, Bach or Purcell. Thanks to Stephen, I rapidly acquired my own library of music as he showered me with volume upon volume of music for birthday and Christmas presents. Sometimes I would be called upon to sing a solo verse in church. Initially the stage fright was terrifying, but eventually, with practice, it subsided and then the voice, which Nigel had painstakingly crafted into an instrument, surprised even me. I was producing the sound but it bore little relation to my light, unsure speaking voice. It was strong and confident, the voice of someone else, poised and assured and affirmed.

  One weekend that spring my brother Chris and his wife Penelope brought their baby daughter to stay and I introduced Jonathan to them as a new friend. They did not demand accounts of a situation which I myself could not fully explain. They were also a receptive and appreciative audience for a few songs. Afterwards, Penelope remarked on the atmosphere in the living room that Sunday afternoon. She said that it was magical, as if a great sense of peace and calm had descended on our house. That comforting remark increased my confidence in my new friendship. Chris was much taken with Jonathan, and before he left he deliberately drew me aside to tell me what a wonderful person he thought Jonathan was, especially remarking on his magnificent Byzantine eyes. Later he rang from Devon. We talked for a long time, discussing my situation and the way that it was changing. I took Chris’s advice very seriously to heart. “You have been steering your little boat single-handedly across a very stormy, uncharted sea for many years,” he said, and then continued, “If there is someone at hand, willing to come on board and guide that boat into a safe harbour, you should accept whatever help he can offer.”

  Later that summer we received a visit from my old headmistress, Miss M. Hilary Gent, who regularly included us in her annual progress round the country, taking in former colleagues and pupils from her long career in teaching. Miss Gent’s memory for names, faces and circumstances was formidable. She relayed her own news network, linking old girls with old teachers and vice versa, and establishing acquaintanceship between people from different periods of her life who had never even met. Keenly observant, she had shown herself sensitive to my tiredness and low morale over the past few years and had done her quiet best to help by writing formal but encouraging letters, and by putting me in touch with old girls from St Albans who had come to live in Cambridge. I rarely followed up her introductions as my life had become too complicated and I preferred the company of the elderly – especially since I myself, at the age of thirty-three, was acknowledged to be living the life of an old person and I needed the philosophical reassurance of someone who had come to terms with the dilemmas of old age and mortality which beset me.

  Once a fortnight or so I would visit the oldest person I knew, a diminutive, white-haired former artist, Dorothy Woollard. As I sat with her in her sheltered accommodation, listening to her tales of the past and commiserating with her malaise at her present restricted circumstances, her room represented a quiet oasis of solitude and reflection in my otherwise frenzied routine. DW, as we called her, had trained in the Bristol School of Art, and as a girl she had seen Queen Victoria, a tiny old woman in a black bonnet, on a royal visit to Bristol. She had painted the pictures for Queen Mary’s doll’s house in Windsor Castle, and during the First World War she had worked in the Admiralty, drawing charts. She had never married but had devoted many years of her life to caring for her adored teacher who was wheelchair-bound in old age. His portrait, her greatest treasure, hung in her room among a vast collection of her own masterly etchings and watercolours. At an age when most people would have retired from all activity, she kept herself occupied by translating books into Braille. She was still quick and nimble, even in her nineties, so much so that once she left the dinner table to demonstrate her ability to touch her toes to my astounded parents. She attributed her longevity – she lived to the age of a hundred – and her sprightliness in part to her afternoon tea, yerba mate, a South American brew which she served to me when I visited her. Amongst my elderly acquaintance only Miss Gent, who was probably at least ten years younger, could compete with her in alertness, clarity of thought and quick-wittedness. Both were blessed with the perceptive wisdom of old age and a sensitivity to the problems of illness – attributes which, in my experience, younger people often lacked.

  Jonathan was with us when Miss Gent arrived one Saturday afternoon for tea. Immediately she and he began to talk. They talked for the rest of the afternoon while Stephen – the famous old boy of the preparatory department of St Albans High School for Girls – and I sat listening. It transpired that Jonathan, in his late twenties, and Miss Gent, in her late seventies, had many acquaintances in common, since music and the musical arena were but one of the many topics in which she was intimately knowledgeable. She interrupted their conversation to follow me into the kitchen when I went to fetch the tea. Unhesitatingly, with an openness which I found extraordinary for a wizened, elderly spinster, let alone my former headmistress, she declared, “I am so very glad that you have Jonathan.” She looked at me searchingly, as though wondering whether to be more explicit. “You have struggled on for so long alone,” she went on, “I don’t know how you have managed; you really need someone to help and support you. He is a splendid young man.” It was as if Thelma Thatcher with all her years of experience was talking to me, telling me that my relationship with Jonathan bore the mark of destiny, that the gift was really to be accepted.

  My parents met Jonathan that summer. As usual they were reticent about expressing their opinions, traditionally indicated by their reactions rather than words. In this instance they behaved exactly as if Jonathan had been a presence in our lives for as long as they could remember; they did not stand on ceremony, nor did they pass any comments on his regular appearances in our household. For his part he tactfully ceded his place at the piano to my father, whose passion for Beethoven had fired my own love of music. So while my father pounded out the Appassionata and my mother plied her needle, replacing the buttons and repairing the cuffs and seams which had fallen off or apart since her last visit, Jonathan would discuss the merits of early instruments with her and tell her about his crusade for authentic performance. It was after we had met Jonathan’s parents that I remarked to my mother what wonderfully kind people they were. My mother looked at me in some surprise. “Well, you ninny, what would you expect?” she said. “People who have a son like Jonathan are bound to be wonderful. How could they be otherwise?”

  At the end of the summer we parted company, already anticipating our reunion in the autumn. Jonathan left England to attend and teach at a baroque summer school in Austria, and we set out, with Don in attendance, for Corsica. Now that the children were growing up and my self-confidence was re-emerging, the fear of flying was beginning to dissipate a little. Air travel no longer held the dreaded threat of separation from tiny dependent beings; instead it held out the enticing promise of a holiday by the Mediterranean on a French-speaking island. The fact that the holiday was also a conference in physics was not a hindrance to enjoyment. In fact it was the perfect compromise because Stephen and his colleagues would be doing what they liked best – physics – while the families would be enjoying the best sort of beach holiday, within a stone’s throw of the conference centre. I was particularly looking forward to seeing the Carters again. I intended to confide in Lucette. With her intuitive understanding of people and relationships, she would be bound to offer good, sound advice.

  9

  The Unexpected

  Cargese, the conference venue on the west coast of Corsica, was certainly the happiest compromise ever devised for single-minded physicists and their young families. While Stephen revelled in the physics, the children and I enjoyed the bright su
n, the sand and the sparkling sea. The occasional bomb outrage and high prices preserved the island from mass tourism, keeping its beaches and coves clean and uncrowded, as Majorca used to be. Cargese was established as the home of a colony of Greeks seeking refuge from Turkish persecution in the eighteenth century. Their presence was still very much in evidence in street names, family names and in the name of our hotel, the Thalassa – the Sea. On promontories overlooking the town, Cargese proudly sported two churches, one Latin and the other Greek. The same priest officiated at both, alternating between the two on consecutive Sundays. Lucette and I attended the Greek rite, fascinated by such an exemplary display of harmony in what might otherwise be a divided community. Both churches contained images of John the Baptist; the Greek icon was compelling for its sharp Byzantine clarity, especially for the haunting depiction of the saint’s long, slanting eyes, so reminiscent of Jonathan’s. Even that image was not able to inspire me with the courage to tell Lucette about my friendship with him. Whenever I tried to summon the words, whether in English or in French, they stuck in my throat, trapped by my sense of self-reproach at the merest hint of disloyalty to Stephen. The glorious new relationship, which promised so much, was awakening doubts. Was it going to force me to live a lie, to lead a double life? That could turn out to be as difficult as the strain and distress of the preceding months and years. I took heart when I recalled Chris’s advice and Miss Gent’s encouragement, but in the company of physicists and their families – among whom Stephen was an awe-inspiring hero – my courage failed me.

  In a quiet bay, away from the children’s shouts, I wedged myself into a corner in the rock and wrote a long letter to Jonathan, trying to organize my thoughts and sort out my troubled conscience. I told him how much I missed him and how eternally grateful I was for the light he had brought to my life, like the light of the Corsican sun searching out the green depths of the ocean. I said how appreciative I was of all the unstinting help he had given us, of the transformation he had brought about in our home, easing the tensions and assuming much of the strain – but I also said that I could not risk damaging my family, that my first duty was to Stephen and the children, that since Stephen and I had lived through so much hardship together, I could not renege on my marriage when he, more helpless than a small child, needed me more than ever. Resting against a warm rock with the waves splashing at my feet, I was preparing myself for the worst. I knew in my heart of hearts that it would not be at all surprising if, after a period of reflection during his stay in Austria, Jonathan were to decide that association with the Hawking household presented too many physical challenges and too many emotional difficulties. Such a decision would be understandable. Why should he want to burden himself with all our problems and willingly walk into an emotional trap when he was young and free, with the well-deserved prospect of a full, happy life before him?

  Memories of Corsica faded fast on our return home, but those weeks had bequeathed us a long-lasting memento. As I took up the reins of the Cambridge routine that autumn, it began to seem even less likely that Jonathan would want to involve himself with us again, and the prospect of a happy reunion faded into the mists with the waning light of the September sun. As the days grew shorter and a chill crept into the air, I anxiously studied the dates on the calendar, starting to suspect in bewildered amazement that I might be pregnant. For some time I had ceased to bother about contraception as it hardly seemed relevant and simply added to the difficulties. In every waking hour and many a sleepless hour at night, the realization grew that, in the carefree abandon of the Mediterranean climate, I had been wrong. Passionately though I had adored my babies, the thought of caring for another little person, who would be totally dependent on me in an intolerably demanding situation, without the benefit of Jonathan’s help, was terrifying. That Jonathan should have considered shoring up the existing family, as he had done for nearly a year, had been remarkable. To expect him to take on another small Hawking, especially when he had no children of his own and no prospect of ever having any as long as he associated with us, was inconceivable. I was resigned to losing him and, with his loss, to losing all hope for the future. I would be alone again.

  The pregnancy had only just been confirmed when Stephen left for a conference in Moscow. Since I was already suffering badly from morning sickness, his mother agreed to go with him in my place. Don was also away with his father on a well-earned break from all those duties, which he fulfilled most conscientiously. As winter approached in Cambridge, the icy claws of the dark, inner winter from which I had so nearly escaped began to reassert their grip. I wrote Jonathan a note telling him about the baby, wretched in the certainty that this note would amount to a signing-off, an abrupt end to those few months of recovery and blissful platonic happiness. I did not know whether he was back from the summer school in Austria and did not expect a reply. For some time I heard nothing, but he replied eventually, apologizing for having taken time to digest the news and to adjust to it. He declared that his commitment to us was unchanged. Although he knew nothing at all about babies, he was sure that I would need his help more than ever and he was ready to offer it.

  I was deeply grateful and felt myself blessed with the support of someone whose own early tragedy had awakened a sympathy and a consideration for the misfortunes of others which were exceptional almost to the point of eccentricity. His hand reached out and rescued me from death by drowning, not just in deep water, but in deep water under a sheet of ice. His encouragement transformed the long months of pregnancy from a time of desperate anxiety and foreboding to a period of hopeful anticipation and even enjoyment. He gave me the fundamental emotional reassurance that restored me to my old optimistic self and enabled me to prepare for yet another challenge, safe in the knowledge that for the first time in many years, this was a challenge I should not have to meet alone.

  There was no escaping the fact that a very definite time limit had been sprung on the thesis. It had to be finished by the time the baby arrived, otherwise it might as well be thrown in the bin. I recovered my incentive, setting to work with renewed purpose even though it was fated always to be done in fits and starts. As usual, the writing had to be fitted in among the accustomed round of domestic chores, Stephen’s care, children’s parties, children’s illnesses, speech days, dinners, lunches, visitors and travels. The latter included a physics conference in Dublin. It was our first visit to Ireland and Lucy came with us. Her picture, not unlike the Hockney drawing of her, appeared on the front page of the Dublin Times when a reporter found her hiding behind a door reading a book at a formal government reception.

  Because Jonathan gave so much help with Stephen’s needs, with the children and with the chores, even with the shopping, it was actually possible to make good, if fragmentary progress with the thesis, although my writing was also competing for time with music and hospital appointments. It was at the first hospital appointment in November that I suddenly became aware of the reality of the fourteen-week-old embryo, a mysterious, ethereal creature, whispering the message of its existence through the clinical medium of a new scientific invention, the ultrasound scan. After putting me through the barrage of usual tests, the doctors wired me up, and when they were satisfied with their findings, they asked if I would like to listen too. The rhythmic swish-swish of the tiny heart – beating rapidly against the background of my own, slower and louder – was poignantly moving, awakening in me a deep bond with the new life I had heard but not seen. It was as if the child was appealing to me through the music of its heartbeat, and so, long before the birth, I began to cherish that unseen presence, already loving the child as much as I loved Robert and Lucy.

  Music accompanied the baby’s gestation throughout the winter. Jonathan, our self-appointed entertainments officer, frequently brought home tickets for concerts, many of which were in the newly opened university concert hall only five minutes away. We sat on the stage alongside the performers in full view of the audience, since there was no other provisi
on for wheelchairs. Often the performers, a host of celebrated musicians, from Menuhin to Schwarzkopf, would delay their exits after their curtain calls to come over and greet Stephen. At home I sang whenever I could, practising my repertoire for its first public performance. The baby responded with animated appreciation, kicking hard in time to the music. We were rehearsing with two musical goals in view. One was my entry in the Cambridge Competitive Festival in March, the other in February was a concert we and some musical friends of Jonathan’s were giving at home for charity. We invited as many people as would fit into the living room and, in the tradition of the numerous parties in our establishment, laid on food and drinks in the interval. Afterwards, in an advanced state of pregnancy and an even more advanced state of nerves, I stood up to give my first public performance – other than the occasional solo in church. It consisted of two folksongs by Benjamin Britten and a couple of songs by Fauré; which were also to be my entries in the competition. The audience were kindly appreciative and on their departure made generous donations to our two charitable causes, leukaemia research and the Motor Neuron Disease Association, which had been recently founded and for which Stephen had become the Patients’ Patron. When, long ago, his condition was diagnosed, we were told that it was very rare, that little was known about it, and that since so few people suffered from it there was no basis for a support group. None of this was true. Through the Association we discovered that the illness – also known in America as Lou Gehrig’s disease, after a sportsman who suffered from it in the Thirties – was in fact quite widespread. At any one time there could be as many diagnoses of motor-neuron disease as there were sufferers from multiple sclerosis, which until then had received much more publicity because there were more survivors. Motor-neuron disease ran its course much more quickly – usually within two or three years – distorting the statistics and leaving patients and their families crisis-ridden, with neither the time nor the opportunity to set up support organizations or self-help groups. On the founding of the Association, some information at last became available. It emerged that motor-neuron disease could erupt in one of two forms. The acute form paralyses the victim’s throat muscles, precipitating an early death. The rarer form, the one which had attacked Stephen, resulted in a creeping paralysis of the voluntary muscles of the whole body – including eventually the throat – over a longer period, perhaps five years or, at the outside, ten. Stephen’s survival for sixteen years since the time of diagnosis in January 1963 made him a medical phenomenon, as unexplained as the illness itself.